Forever disappointed by PZ Myers

The problem with Intelligent Design is the plausibility of their claims to the uninformed; closer examination of details by trained scientists reveals details the average reader doesn't understand or recognize. This new book, Science and Human Origins, by Gauger, Axe, and Luskin, from the Discovery Institute, reveals the problem. Paul McBride discredited their theory of "scientific" evidence for creation. Gauger, Axe, Luskin, and David Klinghoffer revealed their lack of understanding of principles of evolution.

"An analogy: imagine a red Ford Mustang and a blue BMW X6 are in a head-on collision, and both have totally wrecked front ends, with bumpers and radiators and headlights interlocked and everything about their grilles in tangled confusion, and with bits and pieces torn loose and flung about. You’d be able to look at the crash and still tell by everything in and behind the engine compartment that Car #1 was a Mustang and Car #2 was an X6.

"Bergman and Tomkins are the bewildered and incompetent investigators who ignore every other factor in the crash, look at a few particularly mangled bits of the wreckage, and declare that they can’t identify it, therefore…the two vehicles were assembled at the factory in this particular configuration, and no crash occurred. But they use lots of sciencey language to explain this at tendentious length, which is sufficient to convince non-scientists that the interpretation of an obvious historical event has been refuted. And that’s all they need to do to accomplish their goals: fling about unfounded fear, uncertainty, and doubt to win over the ignorant."

Very much agreed, Marc, especially (b). I've seen multiple times when specious questions such as what Joan listed have been answered credibly, and the questioner simply IGNORES THE ANSWER! Fact is, they don't WANT an answer; they just want people to think they have stumped the atheist and therefore have a leg up on them.

It's also worth noting that believers don't like answers to their questions that are out of their fields, especially if the answers involve hard science or proven fact. They're fishing for the very "asked and answered" format which Marc notes above, which we're not going to give them. Questions like those do not promote dialog, just more theist monolog.

To anyone who would ask such questions, my first response to them would be: are you seriously interested in my answers to your questions, or are you simply fishing for self-reinforcement? If the first, terrific, we can move forward. If the second, Don't Waste My Time!

This compiled list that Peter Saunders put together from Twitter conversations earlier this week. He says he did not post these claiming atheists do not have an answer to these questions, but that there have not been any decent responses to them in the past 40 yrs:

Wow, what a pathetic list. Many of them indicate an ignorance of science, and most of them are silly questions.

1. Don't know. Working on it. A lack of an answer doesn't do shit to support your god-claims, though.

2. It's not fine tuned. There are plenty of settings of the universal constants that would be better at producing life, according to some mathematicians.

3. Huh?

4. We have an entire field of study devoted to that, and they have many probable hypotheses.

5. See 4.

6. Irreducible complexity is bullshit, and Michael Behe is being deliberately deceitful in his crafting of the definition of I.C.

7. Lots of small tribes in lots of different areas. Formalized language is pretty late to the scene, in terms of human evolution.

8. They didn't. It was much earlier than that. Next question?

9. Because we evolved that way.

10. See 9.

11. If you mean libertarian free-will, then it's not. We're just an insanely complex series of stimuli and responses. You just think you have free will, because you're programmed to feel that way.

For that matter, how is free will possible in a universe with an omnipotent, omniscient creator? It's not.

12. Evolution of social species. It's part of the package.

13. See 12.

14. Ultimately, it doesn't. As for why it matters to us, see 12 and 13.

15. Ultimately, no.

16. See 12, 13, and 14.

17. Evolutionary psychology has a great deal to say about this. Also, it's not universal. There are some tribes in the Amazon basin with no sense of the supernatural. The exception gives lie to the rule.

18. Because it's a nonsense term. Anything that acts within reality is part of the natural. Try asking what you really mean.

19. What reason do we have to believe that there is?

20. A. Myths.

B. Myths.

C. What accounts for the growth of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism? Same answer. Look for the common cause.

The I.D. supporters are all intelligent and knowledgeable persons and I am very certain they know what they are doing. They must be knowing in their hearts that all their argumentas are wholly unscientific and that they are unlikely to be true. They seem to be saying, to satisfy their unfounded faith that "please accommodate our god somewhere in your science so that we don't appear to be in error in all our lifetime". Nothing else makes sense otherwise.

This is a psychological problem; they actually believe they are right and we are wrong - despite the fact that the the evidence says otherwise.

There are well known psychological blocks (not dissimilar to selective mutism, I expect) where the brain forms connections that literally bypass logic at a cognitive level.

You might consider this akin to a crazy person who does not know they are crazy (this is typical of all mental illness and a key diagnostic factor). Because the person is inside the mental goldfish bowl, every comparison they have to normality is coloured by their own perception of that reality.

The movie, Shutter Island explores this idea in some entertaining detail.